Saira is a delightful flatmate and in the past month since she moved in, I have become almost dependent on her presence. She loves to cook. She sings sometimes, beautiful and low sounds that ease all tension. She bakes flatbreads so soft and warm that neighbors beg for some. Aromas fill the apartment. Roast hare, goat ribs, shrimp curry, khoya purple or red with berry stain seeping to the top. I haven’t seen Ryz since that day at the waterfall. He said he would go undercover at the camps trying to find out more. Meanwhile, I’m due to start at the training center soon and I’m alternately nervous and excited. What if I lose control? What if my face breaks out in vines?

One night, I go to a party at the beach. It has been a while since I attempted socializing. Wandering through the crowd, I idly tune into a stray conversation. All around me, snatches of conversation. “They’re saying the rock has now affected vegetation for about three acres around it. All kinds of plants—grasses, sage scrub, walnut woodland, southern willow scrub, southern cottonwood-willow riparian forest, sycamore-alder woodland, oak riparian forest, salt marsh, and freshwater marsh.”

I pause, my curiosity stirring. “Are you talking about the Celadion Underworld, the rock that was found there?”

The speaker is a tall man in brilliant blue robes. His short, spiky hairdo is silver and he has a lean face with high cheekbones and oddly innocent eyes. An intricate ear ornament made of bronze curls around his earlobe. “We meet again,” he smiles a smile of such genuine joy that for a second, I stop thinking.

Heat and flowers in my peripheral vision. “We’ve met?”

“Xise. I saw you once, at Agniva.” He laughs, easy and high. It is disconcerting in a pleasant way.

The other man is talking now, eager for attention. “I think this slime is that rock—they’re calling it Delta Spew C4 by the way. I think whoever dumped it on the cliffside, tried dumping it in the city first, at the junkyard. But then it got too much in quantity or whatever so they needed a larger space.”

“Which means whatever caused it was happening over a period of time—,”

“—might still be going on.”

“Nobody’s come forward to claim responsibility,” Xise adds.

“Betcha nobody will,” his companion says.

“That’s not right,” Xise says, looking troubled. There is an earnest quality about him. It is oddly touching.

“Do you want to get a drink,” I ask, on impulse. He inclines his head. His eyes are faraway, yet strangely focused on me. It is thrilling.

Taking our drinks, we move further up the beach. Xise talks a lot, his words spilling over us. His school days were a haze, he tells me, full of complicated emotional pathways to navigate. Most people, even children, were governed by fear and insecurity; they committed acts of violence in the classroom and in the playground driven by these emotions. He tried to stop them. His strong, lithe body dodged blows easily but he did not fit. I find myself listening closely. There is some quality to the way he tells his story. It makes me forget my own life and I could use some oblivion right now.

Xise gazes out at the boats as he speaks, his eyes lost. I sip my drink and something warm hits me on the inside. Wedding gongs resound across the beach. Xise stops and gives me another look, amused. “I’ve been going on, haven’t I? I ramble sometimes. Forgive me. They forgot to code that out of me.”

“Code? You’re a—,”

“Sinnefer. Second gen.” He touched his ear ornament and grins. “Don’t worry, we’re not dangerous.”

I rearrange my face because it has given away something. “Of course, I am familiar with Sinnefers, the concept I mean. Humans who have neural code inside them, trained for speed, efficiency, logic.”

His eyes travel my face. “I’m not fond of pity. I’m too sexy for that, don’t you think?”

“It’s not pity. Why would it be pity?”

The next day, I pick bananas from a basket at the open air market, fragile hope blooming inside me. The day is cloudy and cool, the air fresh with a new season, and the markings have not appeared in a while. The aroma of dumplings fill the air. It is at that moment I look up and see them, the women. Three of them, wearing identical black robes, eerie and familiar. For a moment, time pauses and splinters. An ache. A flood of anger, frustration, grief. So voluminous, I almost reel. I stumble backwards, away from them.

I puzzle about it for the rest of the day but when Xise arrives at my door that evening, a few minutes late, all other thoughts disappear. He insists we ride his bike. The restaurant looks expensive and I am anxious as he takes my helmet. “My treat,” he says. “I get paid a lot.”

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“Modesty in a man. I like that.”

Over several courses of food—Xise’s lean frame belies his appetite—he tells me he enlisted in the Sinnefer program at 12, that he comes from a town in the south, a dustbowl, a landfill. Few people choose to become Sinnefers and it is common for the poorest to enlist so I’m not surprised.

“Didn’t you miss your mother?” I ask.

“I don't know what that means. I don't think so. Though occasionally I felt weird. A sensation in my chest. That faded as the neural mesh got stronger. The coding did not allow for emotion and I didn't have much to begin with. An ideal candidate.” He laughs but with no trace of bitterness.

When he talks, I am mesmerized. One day, walking along, he kneeled in the sand and wrote his name and when he looked up, the sun had retreated behind a cloud. In the distance, there were a group of people who looked different from the usual people he saw in his town. He could not put a finger on it, what created this difference, but knew it. They stood in a loose formation of sorts, a triangle. In their midst was a man in pink robes with a sweet, deep voice. Xise stood on the fringes and tried to listen but the words were flung away in the wind. The girl closest, looked at him. A frisson. Recognition. The girl’s eyes alight with a coolness that Xise had only seen in the mirror.

The sun emerged from behind the clouds. A seagull alit next to them, pecked the sand in hard jabs. The man in pink robes glanced at him. Xise felt like something was being said but did not know what. He walked home through narrow by-lanes, dusty alleys where children played in the mud, trash-filled creeks and ravines. Nothing had changed in years. Money was collected and it disappeared into the pockets of the councilmen. Sometimes a road was cleared. A few children were put in school. Hunger and their parents' poverty soon drove them into the waiting arms of the street.

Crows. A lone tree. The smell of asphalt.

He remembers Selene, his mother, pouring water into a tumbler, passing it to him. She ladled rice and green chillies into a steel bowl. The pungent hit would make them less hungry. The man’s face came back to him. The group of children standing by the waters, so certain. The distance in their eyes.

His eyes flicker, then he grins at me as if none of it matters any more, as if time and memory have withdrawn like the tide on that moonlit beach. “I left the next day. I’ve spoken for a while, I'm sorry. Tell me about you.”

“Village #6, dad’s a research scientist, ma’s a teacher. Average childhood. Very boring. Discovered as Kild at 16. Drafted at 21.”

“Being Kild is not average. And a late bloomer.”

“My powers are…undeveloped, erratic.”

He gives me a probing look but doesn’t ask for more because loud voices slice through the cheerful atmosphere.

A scuffle at the bar counter is escalating into a full-blown fight. One of the men is involved, his incensed face looming over a smaller man. “You Pliesian fucker,” he says. He swoops, holding the other’s head down to the counter, a fistful of hair in his hand. The abused, a dapper boy, is crying, sweat pouring into his eyes. Dark stains blotch his shirt at the armpits.

“Sir, please, let him go,” the bartender says, his voice high and scared.

“How dare you allow these fuckers in—,”

His companion watches. A few people move as if they might interrupt. Nobody really does.

I am on my feet but Xise overtakes me. He places a hand on the brute’s shoulder. If it is possible for rage to take on more rage like a deepening layer of dirt, this is what happens to the bully’s face. His lips ooze spittle.

“Put the gentleman down and let me buy you a drink.” Xise says, sounding like he is making a reasonable offer.

“Fuck off.”

Xise’s hand is at his ear, lingering on the spikes of his ornament, and the man’s face goes slack. He glares at his victim, confused now, lets him go and steps back, sits down on the floor of the restaurant. His eyes are glazed and drops of sweat gleam on his face which have turned faintly blue.

I have no time for surprise. The other man has swung off the stool, serious now, glinting.

“What did you do to him?”

“Xise!” I manage to warn before flinging myself at the man’s arm where something silver and sharp is held. He drops it, curses, eyes murderous now and takes a swing at me, a powerful fist catching my cheek. Pain explodes through my jawline and head. I allow the charge to flow through my nerves and into my hands, flex, breathe, and as he comes back for me, I aim at his chest. The briefest contact. With a bewildered howl, he stumbles backwards and tears off his shirt, staring in horror at the red-raw imprint of my hand like a bruise swelling over his flesh, blistering where I touched him. “You fucking witch.”

Cursing loudly, he lurches out of the restaurant. My hand hurts and I’m bleeding. I look around wildly before I fall.

Xise lives in a building in downtown Raia, the more expensive kind where each floor homes one resident. His dwelling has bare walls and expensive furniture that looks like it’s never used. I wake up in a sleek white armchair and want to sleep immediately.

“How did you stop that guy? What does your earpiece do exactly?” I ask. My eyes are still closed and I register his fingers on my face.

“Sorry. Hold still.” He dabs a potion onto my cheek.

“What did you do? When you touched your ear thing?”

“It works like a mild sedative. It wipes the brain clean for a short time.”

“You could do that to me? —I mean, technically? You could use it on anyone.” I open my eyes and he’s not looking at me.

“I would not use it on you. You have my word.” He gets to his feet, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“Are there rules? Of usage?”

“I’m not supposed to use it except for self defense. It’s to protect me from anyone trying to infiltrate my systems. I would not use it on you. Besides,’ he says with a grin, “—technically, you could use your powers against me. You haven’t even told me what exactly they are.” He narrows his eyes but a second later, lets out a laugh. “Never mind. I don’t care.”

Opening a low cupboard, he fishes out a wristband, clips it on his arm. “I have to recharge. You can sleep too.” For a second, his eyes are luminescent.

I start to protest but fatigue steamrolls me and I fall asleep again.